Via the Examiner, a Grayson-ian appeal to the electorate as the left stares over the cliff at defeat. In fairness to Jonathan Alter, he’s been making this argument for months, since the days of late summer when O had a small but consistent lead. He was, in other words, panicking before panicking was cool; I only wish he’d establish some metrics on how to calculate total deaths under each candidate so that we can really compare. For instance, having blown all of his interventionist political capital on Libya, O’s mostly sat on his hands this past year while thousands of people have died in Syria. Do they count towards the Official Candidate Death Tolls? Do the civilians mistakenly killed in drone strikes count? Or are we only talking about Americans, like Chris Stevens?

If we’re only talking about Americans, then take two minutes to read the precis from a Lancet study published last year about the health effects of the economic meltdown in Greece. Higher HIV rates and suicide rates, smaller hospital budgets, and fewer people seeking treatment, partly due to longer wait times. Fiscal disintegration has a huge effect on public health, needless to say, and disintegration is where we’re headed if President Downgrade gets reelected and can’t shake free from his base to strike a deal on meaningful entitlement reform. You won’t hear that in Alter’s shpiel, though. What you will hear, tacked onto the end almost as an afterthought, is him fretting that the public will be throwing away a historic presidency if Romney wins again tonight and voters start to break decisively away from O. Matthews was pushing the same point a few hours earlier. Expect that as the next stage of lefty desperation messaging if The One craps the bed again this evening.